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good morning
today it's the beginning
and then
today's the beginning of a fall practice period
i'm going to have to depend on lot new today i am tired and my head is quite fuzzy so
i don't know what will happen to
see
hum so
today's the beginning of our fall practice period which is a wonderful and auspicious event we're going to be able to sit more regularly it's matter of fact yesterday yesterday know thursday thursday we said goodbye to and own we're going to say goodbye to you too
i'm sorry but we're going to have a great time
r m but they prefer airbus
we are airbus is also leaving tomorrow
are you one of the lives

after the way we sent them away and i hadn't quite experienced it in that way quite before some people made breakfast for them they aid before the rest of us did and then had a between seven or seven thirty a kind and for a bundled up in these few cars and were
sent off and i get kind of theory about the whole thing much to my surprise because am i think
i value so much what they're doing they're going off to our monastery to sit a lot to matter of fact as we speak
right now this is the beginning of their second day of a five day tango area which means they they really just sit and they get up only to go to the bathroom and to go to sleep at night
it's doable for those of you who are considering it later it's quite doable but it was kind of a tunnel that you go through and when you're finished with eternal you very much at tassajara you physically incorporated the rhythms and a sense of being there and you've dropped a lot of your life that you've
left in a number of those people in order to even go in the first place had to let go of huge chunks
of who they thought they were their relationship for a job for awhile it's a big thing they're going because they feel this is the time in their practice where they need actually not just want to but need
to sit to meditate to be with their own mind and body for long periods of time
to study
who they think they are and to be free
of that small encumbered
twisted
painful
sometimes choice
sense
have a separate self can you hear me when i turned my head that way

can hear me now cent min yeah that's been
anyway so they're they're sitting doing it and also by the way i just that i mentioned for those of you who are staying here and not going to such a thing
it occurs to me that we're going to offer during this practice period another little four-day says shane in october which is a nice little added event that i would recommend those of you who are interested to sign up for that
why well because
in
not everybody has to sit i don't recommend it for everybody but some of you do
but
and if you weren't to really seriously transform your understanding of who you are in your life
you do need to
see quite clearly what this self is and to see through it
and then and and then incorporate that into your daily life and the easiest way to do that is by meditation sitting meditation just it is actually the easiest way
so
today some of you are going to be doing that
i am hesitating for a moment because those of you who
can't take chunks out of your life to do this kind of intense sitting
i encourage those people of whom i was one for a long time if you feel like it networks fear schedule just sit regularly at home once in the morning even for twenty minutes is good
a good i used to my favorite time was when i came back from teaching school i would sit in the afternoon when i got back just for like twenty minutes and then the day would kind of slough off and i could really be home at night
ah right
so who are you anyway
and who are we
and is that the same question or a different question
and what is the relationship of way and i
his fall
we're going to set a a text call the sand okay which i want to talk just a teeny weeny bit about today the title of the text added in the sonic guy is called the harmony of difference and sameness
suzuki roshi or founder said that each is a quote each existence depends on something else
each existence depends on something else strictly speaking there are no separate individual existences there are just many names for one existence
sometimes people put stress on oneness but this is not our understanding
we do not emphasize any point in particular even oneness oneness is valuable but variety is also wonderful ignoring variety people emphasize the one absolute existence but this is a one sided understanding in this understanding there's a gap between variety and one
this but oneness and variety or the same thing
so one should be appreciated in h existence

i answered the question did you notice
i didn't mean to answer any questions for you today so i've already made a mistake
it's lucky when you make mistakes
because then you get to it's like a little bit of a dropping off of some of yourself and if you can stay in that place for was very good for us make mistakes
we can learn a lot they're more than if we think we know something
not meeting my text
well i flying off until one side or the other either thinking that we are different than nets a terrific thing and it is or thinking where oneness and that's a terrific thing too
but if we get caught and either side
that's not the right understanding
so should i tell you what the right understanding is no
but ever intelligent security area target
that we know oneness indifference at the very same time must be the ground from which we relate to ourselves and other people
if we don't we get angry a lot
and if we don't we get
grasp a lot we get needy
both are true all the time different same different same
well it looks like i'm going to have to read
i apologize
when we see other people as separate as objects of our desire or repulsion we live in a gap that is the condition of suffering for ourselves and others
that gap is just a conceptual thought we believed to be real we believe the illusion that were separate
it is always threatening
even when we have our object of desire that relief the relief it actually the relief is the relief of satisfaction
since really interesting it's not so much that we want the object is that we don't want to feel
this leaning
we don't want to feel the wanting we don't want to feel this lack
so that when we have something that's what we can that drives us to have to grasp and then when we get it it's only good for just a moment because they were afraid when they lose it and then wanting comes right back up again
and it comes from this fundamental lack that we feel this fundamental dis satisfaction of our lives which comes from feeling separate
that's why we have to know clearly separation indifference and yet break through those differences and understand the emptiness the truth of the emptiness of everything
which is also the same thing to say the truth of our connectedness with everything
but anyway when we see a difference and we attached to that difference
that's when suffering comes for yourself and for other people
and this is kind of what i want to talk about today because the sand okay the text of the santa chi works really well in terms of this diversity business that we talk about so much in our culture right now
i saw a movie not long ago called maria was so g hits every sancho has seen that movie
it's good isn't it
i had no idea to lovely movie it's about a boy around ten something like that young boy around ten who likes to wear dresses and as and the movie itself is done really well it's done with kind of a lightness of heart almost their allotted so proud of fantasy
kind of images sort of floating things the colors are really more than they really are in a really vibrant colorful things and so it's kind of goes back and forth to it keeps them and the subject itself is quite i i was crying when an event but it's very light it's it's like innocent this innocent
ain't young boy just likes to get dressed up in dresses and the community a first his family in every body kind of accepted him although thought he was no sometimes a little bit too much but basically they loved the boy but the community didn't accept
who this boy weren't just who he was that's all just who he was nothing fancy
just who he was and they made it very difficult for the family and eventually the parents clamp succumbed to the pressure while the man lost his job the woman was embarrassing various kinds of ways they were forced to move and they blame the kid and the kid was put in this awful position of choosing between himself
and his parents to love of his parents eventually when he moved
he was playing and somebody came toward him and wanted to play baseball and stuff like that and and first you think it's kind of a boy but it's a tomboy yeah it's really a girl and the mother of that young girl helped the mother of the young boy who liked to wear dresses understand that it's perfectly ok for everybody to be exactly
who they are
and the end of the story ends quite happily but i guess maybe that's why i cried so much because so often doesn't know
anyway it's our practice to understand how concept separate us and how we and how they lack substance that's oneness that's emptiness
like the concept of race differences there and we name it but we know the label only represents some distinction and is not by any means the deepest truth
as you know by now i spent some time in africa teaching music when i came back when i was there something that i read i realized well i was there was that my face my face my eyes no longer saw color
i didn't see color i just saw people
and i didn't notice exactly when that was happening i was just having a nice time and so on but when i came back to the united states it's excruciating that's when i really understood
slowly painfully slowly my eyes began again to see the color of people
before i saw her they were
and it was painful to me
so look around the room for a minute
ahead and look bigger courageous
really really look and see if you can look with no judgments
to save you can enjoy difference
that you can not even enjoy it but just wonder
at the variety that we are
and if you don't know people you know you don't have to judge
sometimes when you know them yet
judging them but even then
the sixties we tried to emphasize oneness and it was a mistake
it was his mistake we worked really hard at
what do you call it now integration we worked really hard and integration thinking that we were all the same and it's true we are all the same but we forgot about the difference part
and it was a that part of it was a mistake so it kind of swung the other way seriously
swung the other way
which is also okay see the whole point is that both of them are true all the time it's just that we have to see things that they are they are identical
definite difference and sameness are identical
and we have to see both all the time like a flat you categories to say goes kind of like that from
so everyone and everything is deserving of respect including ourselves to ourselves we all deserve to be seen heard and understood
differences in us as a society as a community as an individual and we must know how strong our feelings of hate and love are so we can not have those be the primary focus of how we live
we practice noticing that were thinking dualistic lee and we simply don't attach to the content of those dualistic thoughts
we practice noticing that were thinking to realistically and we simply don't attach to the content of those dualistic thoughts

it really helps if you can walk in somebody else's shoes for even just a moment
i know paula if you mind i hope you don't mind me saying so but
paul is thinking of offering to the community a straight session of some sort and he hasn't told me i haven't my pet
it's
i understand that it's a quite an intense thing to do it's a kind of a taste of what homelessness might be like little bit he can taste there
and i remember one time i was in mexico i went to a concert of tibetan chanting
and the middle of the concert there was a break
and all the women of course went to the bathroom
the second
and they were only two stalls for maybe
seventy five women
and i was standing on line about halfway through the line and the person in front of me was a woman in a wheelchair
and from my point of view it took a really long time to get to where the stalls were
cause i had to really go to the bathroom
and i was imagining that so did she
and when we got to the dollar was like a door and there were two stalls straight in front
when we got to the door i looked and i never occurred to me about that she was in a wheelchair i just have been a known as she was in a wheelchair and probably had to go the bathroom as much as i did but that's as far as my understanding went
when we got to the door and the two stalls were in front of both of us
i could see that the stalls were narrow and her wheelchairs not going to fit in
and i just watched i was the one my binary so i watched and she opened the door to try to get close as she couldn't open the door and i don't remember someone was helping her nine forgot that part because i was so struck by this other part and she had to keep the door open while she got off of the wheelchair sat on
and went to the bathroom
and ever since then
i am for whatever kind of adjustment needs to be made for anybody
because just for a moment i was given the opportunity to walk in her shoes just a teeny weeny bit
and i felt the connectedness then with that person

so
a rose is different from a petunia and that's all
a tomato is a tomato and has its place
we're all needed to be exactly as we are
and then what were asked to do by is an
is to stand up there
it's not easy
especially if we're different
whereas to stand up there has happy and sad as a woman or a man has ill or healthy smart dumb gay straight
rich poor red brown tan beige black or pinkish white
it is all as it is it is incredibly mysterious and wonderful in the sense of awe
nine discriminating wisdom is not that you don't discriminate
none discriminating wisdom is that we discriminate
but that everything is a value equal

last june i went is another story last june i went to teach something about the dough on ringing of bells at another sanga not this song a different song and i didn't know any the people there
so i was just you know
relating to everybody and they were men in the room and women in the room
and then it turned out the teacher of that sanga drove me back and
as we were riding back she said she asked me how it was relating to this particular man that i was relating to and then she told me as i was telling you how that was that this man had over the last four years changed from a woman to a man
i didn't know i was doing on my usual how i relate to men stuff
think the
the most interesting thing that this person the man
said to his teacher as he was going through this change was that inside he was the same
but women related to him differently changed and men related to him differently
because it
what he look like an answer

anyway so we all have our individual karma and that's where we need to stand up no matter what it is and the thing is it's easier to stand up in that karma
as a matter of fact the first turning of practice is when finally you don't any longer blame anybody else for any of it
first you have to be angry it's legitimate i mean things happen right and they are other people's faults
ocean
but we forget that at some point as an adult
you accept everything that has happened to you in your life you are a part of it right
you accept all of it as your karma now and it's your responsibility now to grow up as an adult in that place
that's the first turning responsibility
and then we have to do the work the hard work of really accepting who we are really accepting who we are we're selfish and so on and so on and so on
and then little by little as we sit and meditate as we study and steady study just by watching that's the meditation you just sit there and your watch
his study that self and little by little by little you see the emptiness where the sameness or the dependently cove isn't nature of who we are
and you can deeply accept your own pain and once he deeply accept your own pain you accept everybody else's pain and you don't any longer want in the slightest way ever at all anymore
cause anybody the slightest bit of suffering
because you finally understand
your own pain
and you know that nobody wants to suffer
and everybody wants to be happy
and we realize that realizing the connectedness or the emptiness or the sameness of who we are

so to do that work we must meditate it's the easiest way to see how the mind works we do that over and over again until we finally release are fearful holding to this apparent self we so cherish
and fall into the source
this fear that we have is not have the heart itself the mind
so we fall into the heart we fall into the source and we swim and we drown in it until life presses in and then we see through that also and we're back again into the mundane world but this time we live in a world with wonder and gratitude
would not one and not too but just this were at play in the world
and everything then is vibrant
like trungpa said once garbage is really a garbage
it's not bliss
bliss is bliss and garbage in garbage
but garbage is wonderful
it makes compost
you never know yeah
the suffragette miss stanton martin luther king harvey milk said arthur bodhisattva
we're so great because they held our dream to return to cook connectedness while appreciating difference
feeling rich enough to give the love and respect we we actually all can offer each other and ourselves it's in there already you don't even have to work at it you just have to drop the shiels
drop the sense of separation drop that belief
don't put fear that protectiveness that we need for while it's okay but eventually have to renounce their
we're not little separate boxes on the hillside
we are also the great earth those boxes rest on and everything else we see and hear
our little pains and privileges are surrounded and breathe through with a light of universal nature which is h one of us it is beyond all dualities it is silent and still and there is nothing to say about it at all
so we're sitting today we're walking were listening
we're just living
we're living duggan's understanding that practice and realization are the same
so sit well
who are walk well or do whatever you're doing today well
plant yourself like a tree on your cushion
the hips stable
and solid
and the trunk reaching up
breathe into your body so that their space in between each vertebra and allow your head to balance carefully on your shoulders
let your breath
so fuse your mind and body
let all things bubble up
and let them go
let all tension and self concerned drop away
maybe don't be bothered by any of it
simply watch the passing show
and in the deepest sense
what a view is many and same
we do this today as a gift for ourselves
and for the benefit of all being
that we all may be happy
and free of suffering